gildedstage

New Song Preview: Regain Again LLLLove

I didn’t include this in my last post of the year since I’m not good at describing music, but now I’m desperate enough to try without a release date to look forward to.

I think what caught my attention the most from the preview is the difference in mood. It’s a more serious side of the girls both in the lyrics (not just a love song but love lost and found) and how its delivered (as opposed to something like the lighthearted “no!” response to “I need a hint to happiness, is there one out there“ in their debut song). Yet, there’s also the cheers, especially the sustained “ooh” in the beginning, and the instruments that make it feel adventurous and playful.

I already praise Oyuki and Nose’s singing enough to the point it might lose meaning, but I really do love getting to hear Shion’s elegant side in this. Of course, Yukuri’s usual theatrical singing suits a dramatic song about love perfectly. Akira and Shion’s low notes also stood out to me.

Nose considers this song to be the girls singing as real-deal school idols for the first time and I really feel that. Both the title and coupling track of “What is my LIFE?” were songs about the girls feeling we could see in the story, but this feels like them singing about something outside of their experience.

Can’t wait to get more details about the song…

Satellite Original Songs Announced

I was really nervous when it appeared but it ended up being a pleasant surprise. Four new original songs announced and confirmation that there will be non-satellite groupings in the future.

The video itself was also great. I like that Polka calling Shion “Shion-sama” has already happened twice and is so unremarkable that no one reacts to it. I also liked the triangle dynamic of Polka wanting a song from Shion and Yukuri wanting to pair up with Polka in the future. Most importantly… finally, a look into the group roles and my wish for composer Shion came true!

So their solution for composing when they’re split into satellites is that the kids who can’t compose will have someone else do it. We already know that Shion will compose her own and Fukui won’t, so I wonder about the other two. No one in Chaki! seems to have music experience, but I still want them to try. I can already imagine Mai being at wit’s end, but maybe she’d unexpectedly take to working in a DAW (and trying to translate Polka’s bizarre suggestions into music). This is almost certainly my bias and greed talking, but I could see Yukuri putting her experience and passion into songwriting. Although maybe not if she’s already their dance teacher.

It’d be interesting if there was more than one composer in the group.

Also, they’re still clinging hard to calling these the “cover song units” even as it becomes distanced from its original purpose, so I wonder if they’ll really give up these names soon and introduce the traditional subunit voting. It’s just hard to believe that the satellites won’t be the main groups the way things are right now. But only time will tell what goes on in LLStaff’s decision making.

What Happened to Aurora’s Birthday??

Speaking of decision making, why did they completely skip over a birthday just because it was on the weekend? Staff’s decision to have a real time story without fully committing to it becomes silly at times…